


Inside a Marine’s Memories

by smartwaterworks



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smartwaterworks/pseuds/smartwaterworks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life has never been normal for Shield’s Director— but one day fate throws a twist as a former friend’s ghost is haunting her, and she’s faced with fighting her past as it comes back to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inside a Marine’s Memories

His eyes glanced over to the phone that lay on her bedside table and he reached over her to disable the alarm. Maria had spent two out of the last five nights on the helicarrier, combatting a threat that sent alerts to every homeland security agency. He had not seen much of her, as she was either commanding troops from the CIC of the ship or discussing strategies for battle in the war room. Knowing his lover, she would still be up at an obscene time of the morning just to run in the fresh mountain air that they now lived in. The weather had shown its winter strength now for some time, and she would leave in the chilly air and returned a near frozen vessel to chatter her teeth over coffee and eggs. But for now, Loki would make sure she rest, as it was obviously needed. Her internal clock would not wake her at the allotted time, as her sleep schedule had been scarce enough over the past week that it would be grateful for the momentary lack of communication to her senses.

            Loki watched her eyelids as they threatened to open from his movement around her. He smiled as he watched her mumble incoherently and turn her back to him, only to curl closer to his bared skin. An hour later, when the sun began to rise and Maria’s limbs began to stretch, he watched her wake and blue eyes flutter open. The azure orbs flew straight to the phone where no messages would await her, but where she saw her alarm was decidedly, turned off. The agent sighed and her toes curled beneath the warm comforter as arms stretched above her head. She glanced slowly at Loki beside her and instantly smiled.

“You ass—you turned off my alarm.”

“You get enough exercise woman, you need to sleep sometimes.” He laughed and moved to kiss her nose, instantly noticing the redness of her cheeks. “Your bad habits are starting to catch up with you. You’re catching a cold, Maria.”

“I am not.” She groaned, but knew it was true. The woman rolled over her lover to topple noisily into the shower, and he listened from their bed as the water poured away the night. Nearly thirty minutes later and the woman emerges from their large bathroom in full uniform with her hair in the oh-so common regulation bun that restricted her brown strands but liked to enforce headaches when Barnes caused a stir.

            He moves from his place on the bed and waves his hand, using his magic to cover his legs with silken pajama pants. The cold does not bother him in the least, and usually not his lover as she herself was born and raised in bitter winters, but human constitutions did not protect against everything. He followed her quietly to the kitchen as she fixed herself coffee and he worked silently beside her to release and feed the two dogs they kept as pets. “We could put up a tree soon.” She muttered quietly, letting the steam of her coffee warm her face. Maria wasn’t big on the holiday season but she did like to liven up the place at times.

            Loki shrugged and nodded his head with her in agreement. If she wanted a tree or decorations, he was sure she would get them, one way or another. Maybe while she was at work he would find one of those magazines she had lying about the house and pick a picture and use his magic to turn their home into a festive retreat. Maybe, of course, not for sure, Loki wasn’t one for human holidays either. She stepped towards and kissed him for good measure. He had heard her once say that kissing him goodbye ensured an easy day, though she did it daily and rarely did she come home with no complaint. The god kissed her back and slapped her backside as she stepped away to the car waiting outside, earning a narrowing of the eyes but a laugh nonetheless.

            “I’ll text you at lunch and let you know where I stand as far as what time I’ll be home.” She places the gun on her hip and tucks her phone in her back pocket.

“Dinner will be ready at seven thirty, dear.” He says, and she rolls her eyes in return. Loki hears her reply of “Yes dear.” as she walks out the door, leaving him alone in the massive home to his thoughts and books.

            The woman walked briskly in the halls of Shield, her boot **s** pounding the floor as her lips released orders of all kinds. Coulson was walking alongside her with that shit-eating grin on his face as he watched agents nod and reply with a quick “yes ma’am” as they left to do their duties. “Rodriguez—can you tell me why your punch won’t destroy wet tissue paper? Get in the gym ASAP and talk to Sanders; build up your arm muscles, L.T… Anderson, why is that report not on my desk? I gave you seventy-two hours to get that done and I haven’t read the case file yet! Get moving! And you—Holmes, are you seriously telling me that you can’t interview a witness? I don’t give a shit that your people skills are practically nonexistent, you follow through with an order or you’re benched. Dismissed.”

            Her agents scramble around her and it’s a sound her ears are accustomed to, and in reality, it is a favorite of hers. Heaven for Maria would not be Valhalla, but of a normal day at Shield, when she’s surrounded by those who give just as much a damn as she does, and the ringing of alarms and the fire of gunshots from the firing range. This is heaven, and her skin glows with the glory of her title. It is not glamorous, and often her clothes are stained with sweat and blood, but this is what matters. She stands to protect the people she serves.

            Maria is trailing down to the break room where a coffee pot is calling her name when a familiar agent’s lips repeat it as well.

“Director! I need a moment ma’am.”

She turns and grabs the tablet he is holding outwards, and had she not been surrounded by her peers, she would have paled at the sight. “What is this, Wilks?”

He takes a deep breath and begins the story of how an agent’s cover was blown, by someone who knew secrets above his personal pay grade. The agent, whose body was found in a body of water in a foreign land, had alerted HQ before his demise. With his warning came this grainy photograph, tucked in a waterproof plastic bag in his pocket, and two words scrawled with red ink, underlined and written over several times to make bold.

~~** M A R I A  H I L L ** ~~

She nodded her head and dismissed Wilks with a wave of her hand, then raised her gaze to Phil, who was still standing beside her. “Come with me.” She uttered, forgoing the coffee and heading straight to her office, one of the most secure rooms on the ship. The door shut quietly behind them as several secretaries said their morning greetings and earned no reply. Maria walked behind her desk and set the tablet beside her computer monitor. The two synced together and on the large screen came the crime scene photographs. Coulson came to stand beside her as she swiped at her screen, looking for details that her trained eyes would not miss. Despite the gruesomeness of a soaked and decaying body, she did not twitch until the preserved photograph came upon the screen. Her guard was not so high that Coulson could not see through her, as they had become good enough friends in their years together to trust one another.

“Who is it, Maria?” He asked quietly, noting how her eyes scanned the screen.

“His name was Thane Grimes, a former Marine and member of a squad I used to lead.” She answered, her memory as sharp as a tack. There was no need to pull out the photograph of her and her former teammates smiling at a bar. It was in her voice, her tone. This man had once been close to her.

“Was?”

“Yeah… I watched him die on Virmire Island. He died so I and the rest of our crew could get out in one piece.” The wound was old and well healed, but it felt as though someone stabbed a knife in the invisible stitches to bleed her dry. They might as well had begun to break her bones.

“Are you sure?” Coulson asked; he had died once too- or so they had thought. Maria glanced over at her teammate, her friend, and let her eyes fall to the desk.

“No.”

She shook her head and shut down the console, as the photo was committed to her memory.

“You have to take care of this Maria. At least find out if he’s alive, and if he’s not—then who had enough experience to hack into our systems undetected and get that information? We lost an agent today—“

“I KNOW Phil!” She shouted, slamming an open palm on the black desk. Her open mouth inhaled a gulp of oxygen that expelled through flared nostrils. He stood quietly through her temper and moved to place a hand on her shoulder. He had faith in no one more than he did in Maria Hill. The woman was a hound when she wanted information, and nothing made her angrier than losing a fellow agent. She could handle this.

            She sighed again and moved to open the closet to pull out an overnight bag that she would need to put to use soon. “Make arrangements with one of the quinjet pilots. I’ll be heading to the crime scene in a few hours.”

            He nodded and silently obeyed, leaving her in a closed office with her thoughts. Maria pulled out her cell phone and sent a text to Loki **.**

**[SMS;; L] Come to my office. Hurry.**

Loki pulled out his phone and frowned at the incoming message, but teleported to her room nonetheless. With a wave of his hand, the office was made soundproof and the door locked from the inside. Now, they could speak freely.

“What is it, Maria?” He saw the concern on her face, the silent horrors that Coulson had missed. This was a woman angry, but also a woman afraid. Luckily, her fury was greater.

“I have a ghost following me, Loki.” She muttered, still pulling clothes from the small closet. He moves to stand in her way and force her to look at him.

“What are you doing?”

“I have to go. I—I made a mistake on a mission when I was still a Marine. A man died to save my ass and now he’s back and I have a dead agent on my hands. I have to figure out what the  **hell**  is going on. It’ll only be a few days—“

His green eyes froze and his face reflected his disgust. “I thought you were done with these missions, Maria! One day you’ll come home and no one will be there because you’re too stupid to choose.” His words were cold, but the god was tired of her choosing the agency over him.

One day, she probably would go home and find no one but she had to make him understand that this was something she  **had**  to do.

“Listen to me—if Asgard came, today, and asked you to fight for their people, their land, what would you do? You wouldn’t say no! Look—I fucked up before and now I have to tie up a loose end, Loki. Please understand…”

            He did not like it, that much was told on the god’s face, but he accepted that he could not take the fight from her, not when he so loved it himself.

            “Fine.” He snipped, grabbing her arm with his cold hand roughly. She stopped and turned towards him only to be greeting by a harsh kiss. Loki pulled away and brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. “Be careful; I’ll send you your sniper rifle from home.”

            She nodded and blinked, and in that moment, he was gone. A moment later and she saw a familiar rifle lying on the worn sofa she kept in her office. Maria shook her head as Coulson walked in with her coordinates and her flight detail. It would be time to move out soon.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [The relationship that is written and hinted on throughout this is based on tumblr roleplaying. It didn't just happen overnight, and it certainly wasn't just thrown together. It's been in the making for months- and in IC life-- years. The majority of this work will be based on Maria's actions, and how she faces her past. It's more of a character study/action story]


End file.
